“OK, then let’s go down the library and see if we can get a phone book and hope Aldiss Carmichael has a listed number,” I said.
“I don’t think we need to go about it quite that way,” Lance said.
“What do you mean? You can’t think we can drive to Michigan today. That’s at least two hours away. It’s already noon. Two hours both ways, plus trying to find the guy? We’d miss the wedding, and Marguerite would be furious.”
Lance smiled and shook his head. “Is she the only one?”
“No, of course not. Mama, and Daddy, and Nana would feel terrible. And there would be all the people we’d let down . . .” I trailed off. Lance’s smile broadened as he kept shaking his head.
“Do you know,” he said, “that the first time I saw you, you were having some kind of an argument with an undergraduate?”
“No,” I said. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”
“I think you were a teaching assistant. It may have been one of your students. You were making your point like that, listing detail after detail, all circling around a central idea.”
“Oh-kay?” I couldn’t understand how this got us any closer to finding Aldiss Carmichael. I was pretty sure I’d never had him in any class of mine.
“I thought you were beautiful.” He took my hand. “And I remember when Bub did that to you.” Lance fell momentarily silent and pulled me over to him by the hand he had taken. He put his lips to my knuckles and wrapped his free arm around my waist. “I was alone with you in the hospital. You know, I was afraid your family would pull in around you. That they wouldn’t let me come near. Especially since it was my brother who had put you there.” He was rubbing my hand back and forth across his upper lip, making me realize he hadn’t even had time to shave before he took off for the center in the morning.
“But they didn’t,” he continued. I couldn’t follow his train of thinking, but I couldn’t interrupt him either. “They wanted me to be there. They saw me as your research partner and someone who had tried to help you. And I was alone with you when you came around.”
I remembered that. Lance was the first person I saw when I opened my swollen eyes two days after Alex battered them shut. (Technically, I got the broken nose because my head was getting pounded against my knees from the back.) At the time, I felt as mortified as I had when the spider monkeys stole my shirt. But now, I thought that if anyone had to be present in my life in that moment, I wanted it to be Lance. My parents spilled into the room soon after, but I would never forget his wide, sad eyes looking at me, unaware for a moment that I was looking back. “How does that put us in touch with Aldiss Carmichael?” I asked.
“It doesn’t,” he said. “I’m saying that all those people you listed aren’t the only ones who would be unhappy if we didn’t get married. I would be heartbroken.”
“Oh, Lance.” I let him hold me now, tugging my hand loose from his to wrap both arms around his neck and lean into his chest. “I’d be so sad, too.”
“Good,” he said. “Then we won’t go to Michigan. But that wasn’t what I meant anyway.”
“Then what did you mean?” I asked without lifting my head off his chest.
“Come on,” he said, reaching behind me for the car keys he had tossed onto the desk. “We have a police detective to interrogate.”
CHAPTER 19
* * *
“Just because Ace has the same last name as Detective Carmichael, you can’t assume they’re related. For all we know, Ace is a white guy.”
“No,” Lance said. “The first thing I found when I searched ‘Ace Carmichael Ohio’ was his social networking profile, including a picture. And he’s got a brother named Drew.”
Detective Carmichael was Andrew. That significantly increased the possibility that the two men were related. “But Lance, that doesn’t prove anything,” I said. We left the office and headed up the stairs. The finished basement was a definite plus of our small house.
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t prove a thing. And Drew didn’t have a picture on his own social networking profile, plus he had privacy settings turned a lot stronger than Ace. But Detective Carmichael said yesterday that Art had been in driving him crazy ever since last October, right? Why?” We left the building and hurried to the truck. “We both knew he’d been lobbying the sheriff’s department to develop a program for the appropriate sedation of exotic animals. But isn’t it unusual that he picked the department’s junior detective?”
“Detective Carmichael said Art got shunted to him.”
“I don’t think that was a coincidence. Last night, why else did Carmichael stay so much longer than any of the other police? Everybody but him was gone within an hour. I think he stayed from a sense of personal responsibility.”
“He said as much.”
“I think his sense of responsibility is a lot greater than we imagined.”
It made sense, but I couldn’t decide whether I wanted him to be right or wrong as we rode to the sheriff’s building. And I feared that the personal responsibility might extend beyond dropping the orangutans. What if Ace Carmichael had killed Art?
We found Detective Carmichael in his office. He invited us in without asking for an explanation.
Lance began, “Do you by chance have a brother named Aldiss?”
The detective didn’t ask us to leave. He didn’t ask how he could help us, either. In fact, he didn’t say anything. We sat in hard folding chairs across from his desk while he remained standing on the other side. We all looked at each other without speaking. That was how I knew Lance was right. Perhaps it was how Lance himself knew it.
The detective began with a question. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to hand your brother’s name to your supervisor? I’m off this investigation, have been ever since I recognized that truck in your video last night. I can push paper, but not much else, because my brother represents a conflict of interest.”
Without hesitation, Lance said, “Do you know how hard it is to go looking through your brother’s apartment for the bloody evidence?”
“Excuse me?” Carmichael raised an eyebrow.
“What?” That was me, but I knew what Lance meant. After Alex attacked me, prosecutors had forced him to a plea bargain in the criminal case by presenting evidence of his abusive tendencies. They had a shirt with blood on it. Not mine. Not even Nicole’s. The blood was from Alex’s first fiancée. I never knew until now how they got the shirt, but the woman who owned it was more than willing to attest that it had belonged to her. I had never seen it myself, though I learned later that Alex kept it on a closet shelf.
I had wanted him to deny it. And at the same time, I wanted it to sink him. But the woman hadn’t pressed charges at the time. It wasn’t really salient to my case. Rather, it was good emotional leverage to keep the whole thing from going to trial. Alex swore he kept the shirt as a reminder of his own capacity to do harm. I thought it was a trophy.
Now I knew Lance was the one who went and got it. “How did you know about it?”
“Nicole told me. She found it when she was living with him.”
“I’m sorry?” Detective Carmichael had raised both eyebrows.
Lance briefly explained what had happened. The detective whistled. “That’s about seven kinds of trespassing on your part.”
“I had the key. Alex asked me to get him some clothes. I found the shirt.”
“Ah.”
“So to answer your question, I know what it feels like to turn your brother in. But you’re the cop. Not us.”
“Exactly,” Carmichael said. “And I know precisely why my boss needs to know my brother’s name, but I’m not sure why you do. I don’t even know where he lives. I see him at my dad’s a couple of times a year, and we don’t talk on the phone. I knew he worked for the zoo, and I knew he’d been caring for a couple of the apes, but I didn’t know he was involved in any of this until I saw your security video yesterday.”
After a l
ittle while of sitting in silence, Lance said, “We need to talk to your brother if we’re going to have a chance of saving those apes.”
“You think there’s some good he can do?” Carmichael asked, slowly sitting down.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. Until that moment, I was still unsure. I had known it when we all looked at each other, but I only felt certain right then. “A great deal of good,” I said. “He knows more about those animals than anybody else right now.”
“Look at it this way,” Lance said. “When you’re trying to find a criminal . . .”
“A suspect,” the detective said.
“Right,” Lance said. “You interview members of the family first, don’t you? Friends, people the suspect knows. And you’re not only looking for somebody who might be hiding the guy.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
Lance looked over the detective’s shoulder at the cluttered wall behind him. “Watched a lot of TV,” he muttered. “All wrong?”
“No,” Carmichael said. “You’re right. We’re looking for people who would know his habits and behaviors.”
I had to bite my tongue on an irrational urge to add “or her!” Instead, I said, “An animal like an orangutan is no different. We need to talk to your brother because he was these animals’ keeper. He’ll know what foods they like best, what beddings they like to nest with, anything at all that we could use to attract them to us.”
“Last time I knew for sure, he was living back home, and he’s long since moved away.” Still moving slowly, without showing any sign of our urgency or expressing any curiosity about how we knew to ask him, the detective pulled his cell phone off of his belt clip. He stared at the phone, but said to us, “You know, he was in Iraq. Hasn’t been the same since he came home. I guess it’s PTSD. Maybe he’s got it under control. Whatever it is, he got picked up for marijuana a while back. I reckon he’s still on probation.” Carmichael shook his head. “Well, anyway. I’ll start with Dad.” He dialed. Presently, he asked, “Is Mom there? Good. Naw, I didn’t want to talk to her anyway.”
We could only hear the detective’s end of the conversation, but it sounded like he was having a difficult time. “I need Ace’s number, Dad.” After a pause, where we could hear his father speaking but couldn’t understand his words, Carmichael said, “Yeah, I know it’s been a long time. No, I don’t see him and me mending any fences. About the closest we’re liable to get is online.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and rested his elbows on the desk. He said, “I won’t lie to you, I think he’s in a lot of trouble.” Another pause. “No, he’s gone and done something stupid, Dad. No, I can’t talk about it. But I think there’s a chance for him to make some of it right before he gets run in.”
He leaned back in his chair and shifted his hand so he was massaging his own temples with one hand. “Dad, I can’t talk about it. I need his number. He’s going to have cops at his door as soon as we get through some jurisdictional stuff . . . Yes. I know he’s been doing so well these last few years. I know how much progress he’s made. It’s not drug related, Dad. I can tell you that. Ace is going to have police at his door soon, if they aren’t there already. Dad, I need that number.”
And finally, “Thank you.”
When he hung up, he gave a long sigh before he wrote down the phone number and then picked up his desk phone. “Hey, Hugh. I got Ace’s number.” He recited the digits, hung up, and dialed out on his cell again, without ever looking at us. Lance and I held our breaths to try and hear the other end of this conversation. What if nobody answered? What if Aldiss had his brother’s number blocked? What if he simply wasn’t near the phone? Then Detective Carmichael said, “Ace, it’s Drew. Yeah, that Drew. You know any other ones? How you doing, man? No. No, it’s never something good when I’m the one on the line, is it? Listen, I’ve got some people here who need to talk to you.”
Evidently, his brother tried to say something, but Carmichael went on quickly. “They’re going to call you back in a couple of minutes, and you better answer them right.”
He hung up and pushed the phone number across to Lance. “I’d rather know as little as I can. I am not formally a part of this investigation. But you ought to phone him now, before he gets preoccupied with something else.”
Armed with the number, we returned to our truck. Lance put his cell on speaker and dialed.
“What do you want?” Ace demanded.
Lance snapped, “Art Hooper.”
“What?” Ace said.
Lance repeated, “Art Hooper. You’ve been e-mailing with Art Hooper at Midwest Primates. He’s my boss. He’s . . .” I thought Lance might say “dead,” but instead he changed the direction of the conversation. “Listen to me, we need to know everything you can tell us about the orangutans running around our property right now.”
Aldiss started, “I don’t know what . . .”
This time, I was the one who cut him off midsentence. “No, there isn’t time. You took those apes to save them, am I right?”
After a long silence, Aldiss said, “Yeah. I picked them up right at the start, when those boys turned all our animals loose. I didn’t know who to give them to. And then I couldn’t give them to anybody.”
“You saved them. You did. But now you’ve put them right back in harm’s way. And if you can’t tell us the truth about what to do with them, that’s all going to be a waste, because the police are going to shoot them.”
“I guess Mr. Art would know better than me,” Aldiss said.
“Art Hooper is dead, and if you don’t help us find those animals, they’re likely to be shot for killing him.”
“No!” Aldiss cried out. “Chuck and Lucy aren’t like that. They’re wild animals, for sure, but they wouldn’t . . . he’s dead? Who can take care of them?”
I wanted to say not us. Instead, I asked, “Why did you dump them like that?”
He groaned. Finally he said, “Look. I never meant that to happen. I couldn’t keep them any longer. Chuck knew how to get out of the shed . . .”
“The shed,” Lance interrupted. “Like a garden shed.”
“I tried to tell Mr. Art I didn’t have anyplace worthwhile to keep them animals. He thought because there’s a run attached to it . . .”
Again, Lance interrupted. “What do you mean, a run?”
“Like a dog run,” Ace said. “It’s maybe six by six feet. But that male, Chuck, he was all the time bending the wire. And then he started letting himself out of the shed at night. I woke up Thursday morning, and he was hanging upside down off the roof outside my window looking at me, and that was the last thing. I thought, ‘Next time, it won’t be me he’s looking in on.’
“So I played the radio to get him to go back in the shed and I spent the rest of Thursday making up a couple of crates out of some two-by-fours and those skids they use for stacking boxes. And then come Friday, I turned up my truck radio real loud and opened up the shed. They always did like to go for car rides, so they climbed on up and got right in my little boxes. Even let me bang lids on them.
“And they almost made it all the way there to Mr. Art’s place. But I guess they was getting bored, because I looked back, and they were busting out of my little crates like I’d built them out of paper plates or something.”
I interrupted him to ask, “You didn’t hear them breaking out?”
“No. I left the radio up so they could hear it. But they didn’t want to listen, I don’t guess, because I don’t think I’d hardly pulled in Mr. Art’s little road when Lucy jumped right off the side.” Lucy. The female was Lucy. Ace went on, “And then Chuck came busting out of his crate, and he didn’t act none too happy, so I hightailed it out of there.” Chuck. Lucy and Chuck. It felt good to know the animals’ names.
Now that Ace had finally started talking, he had a lot more to say to us. He went on, “I done all I can. And Mr. Art said he wasn’t going to report me to . . .”
“Art Hooper is de
ad,” Lance repeated. “And if you want those primates to live, we need to know as much about their habits as you can tell us. Like, is the female pregnant?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Ace said. “Her junk’s all messed up anyway.”
I didn’t want to hear that, and Lance didn’t either by the sound of his expelled breath. We had gone from one uninvited orangutan to two and a half in a very short time span. “How pregnant,” I asked.
“Um, they get together the same as you and me,” Ace began.
“We know how they mate. How long has she been pregnant,” I clarified.
“Oh. I guess if she wasn’t already when she came to my house, then not that long after.”
I did the math in my head from the animals’ escape last October to the present circumstances this June. I knew chimpanzees’ gestational period was roughly eight to nine months. Not that different from a human’s. Like any responsible rescue, we don’t breed. We manage our animals’ fertility with birth control pills and careful monitoring. But Lance and I both had seen animals through pregnancies, as several of them had come to us pregnant. If an orangutan fell into the same category as a chimp, and I had no reason to believe it didn’t, we would soon have three lives in our hands, if we didn’t already.
“You said they come to music,” I pressed. “What kind do they like?”
“Oh, you know. The older stuff. Ciara, Li’l Wayne. They don’t mind the newer ones like by Kanye and stuff. But it’s the crunk they want most of the time.”
I didn’t have a chance to argue with him that my idea of “older stuff” didn’t include anything produced in this millennium, because my own phone started chirping in my pocket.
I glanced at the caller ID, planning to answer only if the sanctuary was on the other end. But the name on the LCD screen was Olivia Johnstone, and I found myself climbing out to say, “Hello?” I hoped her fruit truck hadn’t sustained any permanent damage from Chuck’s assault on the back door the day before, and I hoped her peace of mind had returned.
The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Page 17